...Even when I'm doing something I'm thinking about doing something else which is usually just about being someplace else and thinking about things...
...Change at this stage in our lives should be limited to mental adjustments...
...I am going to carry around my little fu in my hand like that Gollum dude in LOTR, stroking it, calling it precious, because I just can't get enough of telling people to go eff themselves;

All things I can relate to. Congrats again and keep us updated on your progress!

Overheated stock market aside, there has been a pedagogical moment here:

(1) At 330K, the transition from working for your money to your money working for you kicks in. I did not realize this at the time. I was just plowing every dime into savings. It's not a bad thing per se, but there should have been a re-adjustment on my behalf in terms of efficiency. Hypothetically speaking, if one's goal is 1 million, a transition or at least reevaluation should occur when one meets 330K i.e. how could I have gotten to 330K more expediently in order that I can get to 1 million more expediently. It's my first personal taste of the rich get richer. If you don't understand the basic mathematical laws, you cannot use them to your full advantage. The most valuable feature of saved money is time to think about better saving money i.e. how exactly is my money working for me and how can I make it work better. Warren Buffet essentially built a manufacturing plant made out of money that mass produces money so at this point the means of production and the product are indistinguishable. He's just floating on a raft on top of an ocean spontaneously generating money.

Also, one can reevaluate the very notion of needing one million. You can't live like a millionaire as you become one (if you do, it will take longer), so maybe the whole idea of living like one is kind of bullshit. That's probably a personal issue.

(2) Once again, I would prioritize behavior over investing acumen, at least initially. Even the annuity that I got screwed on made money over time. I made an idiotic choice in choosing a specific investment instrument, but the decision to invest was in itself a smart decision.

(2) Once again, I would prioritize behavior over investing acumen, at least initially. Even the annuity that I got screwed on made money over time. I made an idiotic choice in choosing a specific investment instrument, but the decision to invest was in itself a smart decision.

Great point.
I go insane when people agonize about a 0.05% difference in TER in an ETF, when if they just saved $50 more per month they would be better off with the more expensive ETF even if their holding amounted to $1M.

This makes me think how little people actually know. The first day I invested there were certainly people who said "I'm pulling out, its overheated, its a bubble." I had no idea. I was just excited to start investing. And the ignorant questions I asked, which can now be described as "Does this overpriced investment instrument that I do not understand and which if your job had a fiduciary requirement you would not sell to me because you would lose your license contain these specific tech stocks that I do not understand which will be obsolete in five years?" Just as people today are saying the same thing, as someone is investing for the first time and is excited about it and has no clue about what they are doing or time to determine whether its a good time or not to start the process.

I do believe that between Robo investment websites and a general distaste of the established, paternal order, new investors will make better decisions than I did by moving more towards ETFing and Indexing. You can do your best to know things, including the extent of the unknowns, but there are always unknowns you have no knowledge about. In retrospect, if I had focused more on not making bad decisions as I did trying to make good decisions, I would have been better off.

You can do your best to know things, including the extent of the unknowns, but there are always unknowns you have no knowledge about. In retrospect, if I had focused more on not making bad decisions as I did trying to make good decisions, I would have been better off.

That's excellent advice. I'm not a math person, and most calculations on this forum (especially the lengthy ones full of damned letters and numbers and whatever) make my eyes glaze over. When I started, I read several books on the topic, and decided to pick passive index funds because the theory sounded reasonable and they didn't require much effort. I set up an allocation, and spend few hours every November writing down how much of what I should buy next year.
My husband picked stocks.He likes selling and watching. His profits are much better than mine, but I'm better at saving money, so I win. I think my current investment balance is seven times larger than his.

I just wanted to thank you for your sharing: being also a pesimistic, I recognize myself in your "I usually make between X and Y, but since I have zero guaranteed, that's what I'll count on" and many of your day to day objectives and fails.

Control is an illusion. So its not even a consideration anymore. I get up. I'm alive. Period. I have no rights or entitlements on this earth.

My husband picked stocks.He likes selling and watching. His profits are much better than mine, but I'm better at saving money, so I win. I think my current investment balance is seven times larger than his.

You go girl.

@ FFN

You should start a journal. Writing memorializes and specifies. It's for yourself.

This is embarrassing. Not in that erroneously congratulating a merely overweight woman for being pregnant way (people should really wear post-it reminders on that one), but in a "I'm just a fucked up kind of guy who can't get his shit in order" kind of way. So, well, no big surprise forthcoming.

Although I am sitting in an avalanche of unread purchased books, including a mystery written by some unknown New England writer who I'm sure is busy working his day job watering flowers at the garden center at this very moment, a book that I bought during an expresso bender during my summer vacation. I mean its got a painting of a fucking light house on the cover for Christ's sake, and I would make a really uncouth analogy about what I tend to buy during different type of benders depending on the substance abused during said bender but then you would put me in the cooler, which if nothing else, would bring an amusing level of irony to this whole exchange. In any event, I got in my head that I needed to McLuhan this and read a library copy of ERE. So my wife gets the book and gives me the dreaded "It's out of county and I can't renew it so you better read it quick" speech. Well, and please don't take this personally, it's not exactly a page turner and the content is such that I wanted to read a chapter at a time and then do that whole Kung Fu, walk the earth contemplation bit for a while. So one day I wake up and lo and behold, there's nothing green in my pile. I ask where it went and I get "I told you, you can't sit with it forever, I had to return it." So at this point, the only extreme earliness to this whole endeavor is the return of the book.

Upshot, I have to buy it and get back to my review. And I'm a sucker for extra credit, so Dante it is.

Like so many, I have blown past numbers (415K, primary residence not included) that I thought were once further down the road. I have nightmares of being a featured idiot in the PBS documentary that will be made about this time - "Shithole America" or whatever they eventually call it where I'll be all hollowed eyed, waxing about my past inflated retirement accounts while I take an uncompensated break from lugging shoe boxes at "Ivanka World" while everyone watching thinks "it was so obvious, why didn't he sell?" Which makes me think, with everything going on in the world, can men sell women's shoes anymore? I guess it's a good thing I don't know which means I haven't been in a mall recently. I knew 400K was a plateau, but I didn't realize how much. It's obviously not a huge number, but I feel at this number I have "assets" where before I just had savings. I also have guilt which is insane as I've been broke ass for the most of my adult life. I mean Warren Buffet once made $600 million in day when Gillette was bought and I greatly suspect he didn't feel a pang of guilt. But its weird just waking up and saying "Hold it, I'm the same basket case I've always been but I made over a grand yesterday because I finally decided not to blow through my money as soon as I got it and bought some dumb ass mutual funds instead?" I still feel poor and on the precipice of doom which is probably a good thing but now i'm thinking how did i live like that before. Then again I know a lot of much wealthier people who are fucking downright miserable because their wife got fat while they were busy getting rich which actually happened to my childhood's friends parents. It was incredibly sad seeing her sitting in her muumuu at the kitchen table, her husband saying he's divorcing her and on top of it we accidentally kicked in the basement window. What I'm saying was that if you told me two years ago I would have this I would have said where do I sign but now that I have it all I feel is worry that I'll lose it. I'm not complaining but it does not provide the peace I thought and I start to think well peace is "$800K" which well I'm reasonably certain is just fabricated nonsense manufactured in the bowels of Fidelity Investments. I didn't even know that I needed to care about money and now that I do its sucking the joy out of things. My wife says stop looking at the stocks but I'm like we made $100 on Cisco alone today. It's not materialism but I'm suspecting it might be identity and that is not good because I can see this like a golden fucking noose choking me to death as it does so many others. And the fact that the complete fucking racist lunatic/idiot running this country is having a flame war with his North Korean nuclear button doppleganger but because my shit is greener than Kermit's I'm kind of Ok with it.

What I'm saying was that if you told me two years ago I would have this I would have said where do I sign but now that I have it all I feel is worry that I'll lose it.

I have had the thought lately that “holy crap, I’ve got more money than any member of my slightly white trash family has ever had!” And then immediately start thinking; “should I transfer it all into a money market to protect it?” And then I have a flash of myself gently stroking my account and creepily whispering “My Precioussss” as my hair falls out.

And then I remember to thank god and the universe and fate and myself—all contributed, I think—and I send a check to the Union Mission and Heifer International And trust that the future will take care of itself.

Congratulations on your success. I sometimes feel the same way, worried about a huge market crash. If I'd sold, I'd have missed out on so many gains. So now, I am simply adding to my conservative investment (Wellesley/Global) and letting my index funds run their course.

I have way less money than you, but I still check the stock market constantly and have the fear of losing everything in a near future. Sometimes, I also say "perhaps we need to stay and save like crazy one more year, just in case, it will be safer"...Screw it, we already won Jason, we developed habits and gained some skills that will always help us to stay afloat and excel among the others.

Keep it up, save and enjoy as much as you can. Set a goal and stick with it.

An attitude of gratitude (the cliche most favored by every recovering crackhead I ever met) is often the great emancipator, especially from anxiety. In light of your comment, I will donate money to the hospice that took care of my father during his final days. They were nice.

(@) ST

Good plan. Thank you.

(@) FC

The habit formation is a good point in that the gains are a result of stock market increases, but the initial principal is a result of behavior modification. In my younger years, drunken sailors would say I spent like a drunken sailor. The psychology, partly due to passing of time, partly due to not wanting to lose $, I guess is normal. Stock market opens in one minute!!!!

Well, my most challenging case scenario is something like I am 75 when SHTF and I am left with the care of one or more theoretical dependent descendants. I could write this responsibility off if I could honestly say that I don't want my kids to have kids, but since that is not true, I am stuck with dealing with SHTF as one of my possibility nodes. Otherwise, I could just accumulate large stash of morphine and Kevorkian machine.

What we and everyone shares in common is our own inevitable decline proceeding our departure from this great earthly ball of ever rotating and never ending bullshit. I will not have grandchildren to take care of or who will take care of me and I'm assuming if i did I wouldn't like them much in the same way my grandmother revealed that she did not like me (alzheimer's if anything is truth serum. I visited a woman I worked with who has dementia and she revealed so much shit that was obviously true I couldn't stop laughing all the way home. Dementia people can be quite interesting that way, if you can get over that whole cheating at board games shit they pull without even the slightest hint of compunction).

The difference between us is that I have no descendants that may be helpful/burdensome. I got windows down, Canned Heat blasting, open road as I Thelma and Louise my ass into the fucking beyond. I can actually see it now when I dare to look.